


Needs of the Few

by Rin_the_Shadow



Category: Dororo (Anime 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Contemplation of Suicide, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied Character Death, Plague, also technically alternate universe to the alternate universe, basically a half-formed idea dump, depictions of violence but not extraordinarily graphic, like more angst than my usual dosage, mentions of child death, mostly written in present tense, technically the closest thing I've written to a dark fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rin_the_Shadow/pseuds/Rin_the_Shadow
Summary: She is his right hand, and she will become anything if it means he does not have to.





	Needs of the Few

**Author's Note:**

> I've put the content warnings in the tag. I had been toying for awhile with possible routes I could take to the ending of my Dororo AU, (particularly playing with elements of the game adaptation), and this is made up of a few of them.

She is not afraid to die. It was something she had lost long ago, sharpening the bone of someone she once knew and whose name she has since forgotten, ready to plunge it into the throat of the next person who came to move them. Yet by the time Lord Daigo Kagemitsu arrived, she could only stare numbly until her mind registered him several seconds later. If her brother hadn’t bitten him first, and he _had_ been a threat, she would have been too late.

She is not afraid to die. But sometimes she regrets that the guard who put them there had died by someone else’s hand.

 

When she and Hyogo were finally deemed healthy, they had been assigned to look after Lord Kagemitsu’s son. The boy had no siblings of his own, and his mother existed between a haze of formality and one of depression. Lord Daigo Kagemitsu didn’t want him to be alone. Of course, she thought. He would not have saved their lives out of simple kindness. No one like that existed.

The boy had an earnest nature, and she had resented him for it. He asked questions he shouldn’t have, and which she and Hyogo should not have answered. And yet they answered him. It was only practical, she had told herself. It wouldn’t do to anger the lord who rescued them and risk their source of food and shelter. But perhaps there was some small part of her that could appreciate his refusal to dance around the subject. She has never liked being fragile.

Still, she does not know if she would have recognized it if he hadn’t gone missing one day. He had climbed in the trees, higher than he ever had before, yet when he called to his mother, she had looked right through him. And she found herself wanting to scream at the woman, didn’t she understand the tides could turn and he could be _gone_?

But she smoothed it back behind a blank-faced mask and went in the direction she knew Tahomaru had run, Hyogo close behind her. He hadn’t wanted their comfort at first, batting her hand away and curling tighter on himself. It wasn’t like it would hide him when they were all crouched below the grass.

“Young master,” she had thought to say more, yet it was all that would come out.

And apparently, it was all that was needed for him to turn and launch himself into her arms, burying his face against her and crying how it wasn’t fair.

“No,” she had finally answered. “It’s not.”

It almost never is.

 

She had trained alongside them, chiding Hyogo to stay awake during schooling and Tahomaru to remain alert as he mastered his katas. The servants of the house called her cold and unfeeling, but her brother and the young master denied it at every turn.

She has never had the heart to tell them they weren’t wrong. Something had frozen inside of her long ago, but perhaps that wasn’t all there was.

 

Over the years, she develops a fondness for the bow. It is precise and distanced, allowing her to see more than just the enemy in front of her before she fires and requiring more strength than its slight appearance implies. It suits her, Tahomaru says, and she can’t deny the satisfaction she feels in her agreement.

Still, she isn’t fool enough to believe she can always keep enemies at a distance. And so she trains in the sword as well, much to Tahomaru’s delight. The sword has always suited him best.

Hyogo, on the other hand, comes to prefer blunt, close-range weapons. Which, she can’t help thinking, fits him as well. He could mask his emotions as well as she could, but he has never had her gift for calculated manipulation.

In some ways, it is better that they lack it.

 

Lord Kagemitsu may have been the one to save them from starvation, but there is no doubt their loyalty has grown towards Tahomaru instead. She knows they will become anything for his sake.

And so when he asks them to investigate the situation with a blind, limbless baby his parents traded years before, she hunts until she finds someone, plying him with drugs and forcing the truth from his lips until he bites down on his tongue to silence himself. She stands by Lord Tahomaru as he pieces the truth together, neither she nor Hyogo saying a word. And she prepares to shoot down the demon child when it blinds Tahomaru and flees, stopped only by the guilt that nearly takes Lady Nui.

 

She is not afraid to die. And for the young master to whom she has sworn her loyalty, she will become anything.

Still, when he tells her he plans to follow the demon child, she is the first to question it. He hasn’t thought everything through, where he is going, or what he intends to do when he gets there. He has no plan for what he will do if it _is_ truly a demon. Wasn’t it him who had said the demon child must die so the land can live?

But he stops her with a single question. “If the demons still protect this land, why were my fishermen eaten by monsters?”

For once, she has no answer.

Still, he at least agrees to look for a solution, once he goes. They agree to inform his mother of his plans once she awakens, and Mutsu procures a means for him to travel without revealing his identity. The idea of sending him off still sounds like a fool’s errand, but she knows she will not be able to stop him.

She still has no answer to his question, and she will find it herself.

 

For weeks, months, Lady Nui is their only connection to the house. They maintain that they are going to hunt the demon, and that they follow the young master where he goes. In reality, they pass in and out only through passages Nui leads them to. They visit the surrounding villages, tracking the effects of each demon slain, looking for anything to slow its decline.

And she begins to notice a pattern. The disasters don’t come slowly. They come suddenly, in spurts, in the areas they will be felt the most. Which strikes her as odd, and she voices as much to Hyogo. If the demons protect the land, then why such great tragedies each time even a single one is slain? Don’t the rest of them still have an obligation to uphold the bargain?

They venture out of Daigo's territory only once or twice, but it’s enough to know the effects the demons have elsewhere.

In the end, she concludes that the amplified disasters, one after another, are the demons’ way of tightening their hold, of punishing Kagemitsu for failing to prevent his firstborn’s survival. She suspects they would claim Tahomaru as compensation if they could, and wonders what prevents them from doing so.

She does not tell Lady Nui what she has concluded. The woman may help them, but it does not erase the fifteen years she spent neglecting her son for a mangled corpse she had birthed and lost.

Yet almost against her will, she finds she cannot hate her as she did before.

 

She does not desire children of her own, if she ever has. Though her lip curls in warmth to the ones she interacts with in her travels, she has no desire to bring her own into a world like this one. They are too easily lost, too easily used as pawns to twist the arms of their parents, as she and her brother had been. They are apparently tempting fodder for demonic deals, and she slowly comes to believe that if it had been her in Nui’s place, the husband would likely not have survived long enough to sire a second son, risk to her own life be damned.

Beyond that, she would not want a child to see what she is willing to become for Lord Tahomaru's sake.

And now, to that list of reasons and liabilities, she adds that they are too easily taken by disease.

Plague clings and festers in the village they have entered. Though they do what they can to bring water and medicine, the stench of death still hangs all around them. Lord Tahomaru would order them to leave, to avoid risking infection themselves. But he would have refused to do so himself, and so they justify their continued presence until Kagemitsu’s men arrive to burn down the village.

Some of the people manage to evacuate, and she finds herself torn between pity and disgust. She does not agree with the burning, but isn’t it selfish of these people to risk spreading the infection to surrounding villages?

 

The first mark appears on her body, and she wants to scream in fury.

She tries to distance herself from Hyogo at first, though she realizes since he was there as long as she was, he is probably already infected. She monitors him, checking for any signs of the plague, but he never shows a single symptom.

She tracks the reports of the people who fled from the plague-infested village. Strangely, it never takes hold in their new residences, even though they must have been carriers as she is.

Then it is another calculated penalty from the demons, she determines. And this time, she has been included in their price.

She wonders absently if this means they have figured out Lord Tahomaru’s involvement, or if demons can even be aware of such things.

 

She is not fool enough to believe that everything will be fine once the deal has been broken. Though at times, she wonders if they are not condemning the land to worse by killing the demons one by one, instead of all at once.

 

The mark remains there for awhile, and it almost seems as though it’s all that’s going to come of it. For a foolish second, she dares to hope her body will root out the infection on its own. But when it begins to burn, and the next ones crop up around it, she wonders why she had ever expected otherwise.

She lies awake at night sometimes, tilting her sword in near darkness and contemplating if it would be better to go ahead. Because some small part of her still believes the plague is demon-born, and she does not want them to have the satisfaction of watching her die.

But she never goes through with it. Her death would destroy her brother and the young master, and she does not want to put the burden of explaining it onto Hyogo.

And so she fights it as best she is able, resting where she can, and pushing herself where she must. If nothing else, she will survive until the young master returns.

She is not afraid to die.

 

Whatever she may have expected his return to be, she’s not sure she expected anything quite like this. The soldiers bring in a kicking, screeching child whom she recognizes from Banmon, and the young master seeks them out not long after.

He had convinced his brother not to follow him, and it takes Mutsu a moment to register he is talking about the demon child. Somehow, she hadn’t quite expected them to grow close. She almost has to bite back a smile. She hadn’t expected he would grow close to her, either.

What Tahomaru wants is to sneak into the cells and free the child, but he isn’t certain his brother will wait for him. He was distraught when they had taken him, Tahomaru explains, and he had only barely convinced him it would be easier if he waited and remained hidden.

“I told him I would send you to him, Mutsu,” he says. “You’re the better for eliminating threats before they get close. Hyogo and I will join you as soon as we’ve freed Dororo.”

Something has changed about him. There’s still a trace of the bright-eyed child he’d once been, but something much colder has crept in, choking off his former naivete. It saddens her somewhat, but at least he will be able to survive once she is gone.

She is not afraid to die.

 

In truth, she had not wanted to go to babysit a demon child, but the young master had asked it, and she would not refuse.

Up close, though, when he wasn’t swinging his swords around and twisting through battlefields, he didn’t look much like a demon. The casing to one of his sheaths had splintered away, leaving only the blade, and yet all she can think is  _you don’t look like much for a demon_. She isn’t fool enough to say it, however.

He never quite paces, but periodically rocks on his heels, never quite grabs at his sword arm, but running his hand over it as if he thinks it will make the sheathe reappear, never quite glaring at her, but clearly not happy with her presence. She doesn’t want to be there any more than he wants her there, she refuses to say.

“The young master sent me to keep you from getting yourself in more trouble,” she states.

At his confused stare, she adds, “Tahomaru.”

He doesn’t quite relax at that, but something that has been coiled within him loosens just a bit.

 

For the longest time, neither of them says anything. There is no purpose for them to speak, now that he knows why she is here, and the noise would only draw potential threats closer.

She surveys almost constantly, hoping the young master manages to refrain from saying anything that might damn him. She and Hyogo had given him the story they had fabricated between themselves and his mother, but it didn’t mean that Kagemitsu would not see a break somewhere in it.

Besides, the demon child next to her—hadn’t they called him by name, once?—Hyakkimaru is growing restless again. She might be able to wait, but she does not know if the same is true of him.

When his fidgeting stops, she knows she should be relieved. It annoyed her far more than it should, for the kinds of things she’s put up with before, and she blames the plague burning inside of her.

But instead, his stillness just makes her uneasy. She knows he’s staring long before she turns her head. What does he even see? Tahomaru described it as a kind of aura, but his understanding is passable at best, from what she pieced together of it.

No, she realizes, she knows exactly what he’s looking at. “I’ll have to ask you not to tell the young master what you see,” she tells him. What’s done is done. There’s no reason to let him worry over it.

He only scowls harder, as if he can’t quite make out the reason she wouldn’t want him to know. As if he’s never done the same. Human or otherwise, she is certain he has.

 

They go for what feels like hours without speaking. And Hyakkimaru does not seem uncomfortable with this, nor does he ever move as if to speak. Which she admits she finds a little strange. Even Hyogo and Tahomaru have always struggled in that regard, and she is certain no one has ever taught him to keep quiet. Still, let it never be said she had no appreciation for his silence.

Then something rustles, and she nocks an arrow, moving in front of him to ensure he won’t get in her line of fire. He may have killed many demons, but her orders are to defend Lord Tahomaru’s brother, and that is what she will do.

Hyakkimaru recognizes them before she does, but she lowers her weapon just in time for Hyogo and Tahomaru to appear over the hill, looking far more like his old self than before.

Almost immediately, Tahomaru goes to his brother and leans their foreheads together, cupping one hand against his cheek and one against his shoulder in a way she knows is affectionate but only makes sense to them. “Mother has Dororo,” he whispers. “They’re going by the river to keep anyone from following. We’ll meet up with them shortly.”

Wherever the gesture has come from, it relaxes him for the first time since she’s known him. Which, she admits is not long, but she’s seen the way he holds tension and recognizes a habit when she sees one.

“We should set out then,” she says. Those two are clever, but if Kagemitsu suspects, they need to find them quickly and then move as far away as possible.

 

The escape goes badly. She awakens to find herself in a sickroom, bandages wrapped around her arms and torso, and the memory slowly comes back to her. Shooting down multiple horsemen, Tahomaru trying to throw himself between the soldiers and his brother, her arm exploding in pain as an arrow finds its way into her bicep. The shouts as the soldiers insist they have been enslaved by the demon’s influence.

But she is not dead. One way or another, as badly as the escape went, they managed it.

She remembers a disconnected scream, hers, yelling, “Cut it off! _Cut it off!_ ” The arrow hadn’t been poison, had it? She can’t quite bring herself to look. She doesn't think that happened while they were on the run.

It isn’t the first time she’s been awake since then, is it?

But she knows she can no longer hold a bow to fire. Perhaps, if she had more time left, it would be different. But the stress of their escape has weakened her to the illness.

She’s back inside that storage room, left weak and fragile and unable to do anything about the chaos around them.

She hears the arguments outside, whether it would be better to give up and return the body to the demons, whether they _could_ do such a thing with eleven already dead, whether they simply need to hurry and kill the last so it won’t reassert itself. It’s all speculation.

Because it doesn’t matter what they do anymore. This land is going to collapse from depending on the demons for so long.

She is not afraid to die. But she _is_ afraid to sit uselessly on the sidelines as she loses all she has left.

 

She does not tell them where she is going. As far as she’s aware, none of them even know she’s left yet. But once they realize where she is heading, she won’t have much time to do what she must.

Her body aches, her lungs burning in protest. If the others don’t stop her, then her own body might—no. She will do this. She will find enough fight to make it there.

The demon won’t accept her as a sacrifice. She is the eldest, but she holds no power over the domain. It may see her as a tool, but she will be nothing more.

Tahomaru would object, but she has seen enough of him since his return to know that while he has grown colder, more pragmatic, he will not do what must be done if it means sacrificing one of his own in the process. Not even if they are willing.

Truthfully, she does not want him to become someone who can do that.

She grips her right arm as pain spasms through it. She has to make it to the Hall of Hell before she collapses. She _will_ make it.

Her decision will devastate them, but the only alternative she can see is far worse. This way, Hyogo will be able to survive. Tahomaru will keep his brother. And neither will have to watch as she slowly burns from the inside out.

She is not afraid to die. But she will make certain she becomes the bone they plunge into the final demon’s throat.

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently when I write Mutsu, I take one part Han'nya, Haruka Ten'oh, a dash of Rachel from Animorphs, a pinch video game Alessa, and a bit of Mister Spock. Though if I'm in a joking mood, I'll probably tell you I just write an evil mastermind who happens to have a conscience and be on the side of good.
> 
> Because this is what I do instead of actually finishing the chapter I'm supposed to be finishing.
> 
> This is also not canon to the AU I created for these characters, though it does operate in a variant of that timeline. Which is why several scenes, like their escape and reunion with Dororo, are very sparsely done. I had actually had a few alternative versions of it, one involving an actual demon hunting them.
> 
> Mutsu is something of a fascinating character for me, in part because we don't always get to see a lot of what's going on up there, except in carefully controlled moments. I did use she/her pronouns, since the term used for her has been "older sister" in the show and apparently in the merchandise. Though I debated never referring to Mutsu except by name, as I do when writing from Tahomaru's perspective, the shedding of the name helped me to keep the idea that she would become anything she needed to be.
> 
> I would very much like to write Mutsu again in a less....this...context. I probably will think of some excuse for the group to return to Daigo Kagemitsu's territory that doesn't involve such a dire situation and allows them to more easily slip out. Or maybe post-canon. 
> 
> In any event, please let me know what you think!  
> ~Rin


End file.
